More Fire Phones in the pipeline, Amazon undeterred by failure

Once burned, twice not shy at all

The first Fire Phone has proved something of a failure, but Amazon says it is not ready to give up on creating more phones in the range.

Amazon president of devices for Amazon in Europe Jorrit Van der Meulen says that doesn't mean we won't see more Fire phones in the future, though.

"In an honest assessment of the Fire Phone, we've learned a lot on this one… We're undeterred, but we're not immune to the criticism either."

Rather than plugging away at the same blueprint, Van der Meulen suggests the second Fire phone may be quite different from the first, "we certainly read everything that's written from customers to journalists and take note, so might the second step be slightly different than our first step, sure. I suspect that it will be."

This also suggests we may be a way off the second Fire Phone — although even in the fast-moving mobile world we've barely waved goodbye to the first phone's UK launch on 30 September.

A wallet-shaped hole in your pocket

The Fire Phone's dismal launch bit a $170 million chunk out of Amazon's recent financial reports, with $83 million worth of the things sitting around unsold.

Van der Meulen compared this failure with that of the first Kindle device, which was a rather funny-looking thing compared with what we're used to today. And no everyone loves Kindles now, right?

However, there are obvious differences in terms of the markets these devices are part of. Smartphones are fairly mature – ebook readers weren't back in 2007.

We'll have to wait to see whether Amazon has already done too much damage with the first Fire Phone to rise again, possibly next year.